Now a faintness falls on the men that run, and they all stand still. And the wife prays Hamish as if he were God, on her knees, Crying: "Hamish! O Hamish! but please, but please For to spare him!" and Hamish still dangles the child, with a wavering will. On a sudden he turns; with a sea-hawk scream, and a gibe, and a song, Cries: "So; I will spare ye the child if, in sight of ye all, Ten blows on Maclean's bare back shall fall, And ye reckon no stroke if the blood follow not at the bite of the thong!" Then Maclean he set hardly his tooth to his lip that his tooth was red, Breathed short for a space, said: "Nay, but it never shall be! Let me hurl off the damnable hound in the sea!" But the wife: "Can Hamish go fish us the child from the sea, if dead? Say yea! -- Let them lash ME, Hamish?" -- "Nay!" -- "Husband, the lashing will heal; But, oh, who will heal me the bonny sweet bairn in his grave? Could ye cure me my heart with the death of a knave? Quick! Love! I will bare thee -- so -- kneel!" Then Maclean 'gan slowly to kneel With never a word, till presently downward he jerked to the earth. Then the henchman -- he that smote Hamish -- would tremble and lag; "Strike, hard!" quoth Hamish, full stern, from the crag; Then he struck him, and "One!" sang Hamish, and danced with the child in his mirth. And no man spake beside Hamish; he counted each stroke with a song. When the last stroke fell, then he moved him a pace down the height, And he held forth the child in the heartaching sight Of the mother, and looked all pitiful grave, as repenting a wrong. And there as the motherly arms stretched out with the thanksgiving prayer -- And there as the mother crept up with a fearful swift pace, Till her finger nigh felt of the bairnie's face -- In a flash fierce Hamish turned round and lifted the child in the air, And sprang with the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea, Shrill screeching, "Revenge!" in the wind-rush; and pallid Maclean, Age-feeble with anger and impotent pain, Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and locked hold of dead roots of a tree -- And gazed hungrily o'er, and the blood from his back drip-dripped in the brine, And a sea-hawk flung down a skeleton fish as he flew, And the mother stared white on the waste of blue, And the wind drove a cloud to seaward, and the sun began to shine. ____ Baltimore, 1878. To Bayard Taylor. To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height, O'erseeing all that man but undersees; To loiter down lone alleys of delight, And hear the beating of the hearts of trees, And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white By greenwood pools and pleasant passages; With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul, To pace, in mighty meditations drawn, From out the forest to the open knoll Where much thyme is, whence blissful leagues of lawn Betwixt the fringing woods to southward roll By tender inclinations; mad with dawn,